


Tully-Red Fur

by ivanolix



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Banter, Crack, Future Fic, Gen, Shapeshifting, Wordcount: 100-1.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-02
Updated: 2012-05-02
Packaged: 2017-11-04 18:54:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/397100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivanolix/pseuds/ivanolix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brienne rescues Sansa and returns to Jaime, but there's a problem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tully-Red Fur

Brienne’s great horse, robust as it was, could never have carried both her and Sansa Stark. His surprise came from something other than the two horses. Small as she no doubt was, the Stark girl could not have been so tiny as to disappear completely into the grey palfrey. Yet Jaime saw no upright figure, and so narrowed his brow.  
  
The Maid of Tarth pulled up without a word and dismounted one-handed. He’d only just perfected that dismount after many weeks’ practice; she performed it clumsily, and he wondered if there’d been a battle. An injury? “Where is she?” he demanded of the woman. “Did you lose her _now_?”  
  
Scarred and filthy, Brienne offered a scowl so hot that it would have burnt bread, yet the expression was contrasted by the tight press of her lips. She walked to him and stuck out one cupped hand.  
  
A red squirrel eyed Jaime, clutching its own tail with wee paws. Brienne’s hand was large, especially gloved in leather, and the squirrel seemed no more than a stray tuft of fur within it.

  
”Have you gone mad, wench?” Jaime scratched his skull, bewildered.  
  
“This is Lady Sansa Lannister—Lady Stark, I mean.” Eyes like iron and lips in a taut bloodless line made Brienne look fiercer than usual.  
  
Jaime stared at her, then the squirrel, and found the latter eying him with something like worry and anticipation.  
  
The fur was even Tully red.  
  
He _couldn’t_ laugh. “Do you know nothing of guarding kings? First Renly and now this?”  
  
Brienne’s answer to his outburst came as a hard fist to his jaw, dislodging the joint halfway with an audible pop.  
  
Sansa—the squirrel—squeaked.  
  
He could laugh then. “Enough. Enough, Brienne! I apologize, it was ill said.” Jaime stretched his jaw back into joint, but the laugh left his voice. This was no joke.  
  
“As I said, I did my duty. I saved her. I told Lady Catelyn that I would, and so I did.” Brienne retracted her hand and Sansa clambered up to her shoulder. Small squirrel eyes stared again at the Kingslayer.  
  
“You turned her into a squirrel,” Jaime noted, his good hand on his hip in a manner that Cersei always said mimicked a fishwife.  
  
“I didn’t.” Brienne flung her hand out desperately, breath leaving her jaw harshly. “ _She_ did. When I found her, the entire Vale could have told me how she…how she…went into a hawk to escape Lord Littlefinger. Then I saw it myself, a robin that time, and by accident. I tried to help her control it but she went into the squirrel and could not come back. Her true body lives but—” Brienne’s mouth twisted uncomfortably. “It is some strange Northern magic, I’m sure. I know it not.”  
  
Jaime blinked.  
  
Sansa chattered—Brienne cocked her head like a master of hounds, and nodded.  
  
“She says she does not understand it either,” Brienne explained, “but people used to say that her brother could turn into a wolf, and in the past there were stories…”  
  
Swallowing, Jaime took grave effort not to let out another laugh. “You…speak with beasts, Brienne?”  
  
The woman opposite him braced herself and glared. “I’m no dolt, _ser_. We’ve traveled many a road. It’s taken weeks, and she taught me to understand some.”  
  
They both pointed focused stares his way, two stubborn strange women with magic that was more than what came naturally to their sex. Knowing he was lost, that no back door existed to help him escape this oddity, Jaime rubbed the bridge of his nose and remarked, “Had she lived, I think Catelyn Stark would curse me for an oathbreaker still.”  
  
Brienne’s mouth opened and shut sharply. Before Jaime could question her for it, however, she answered, “We are here. It cannot be helped. Sansa would not blame either of us, at least.”  
  
Jaime scarcely dared to ask. “What of the girl’s true form?”  
  
The Tarth maid nodded to a long bundle slung over the palfrey. “It is lifeless but not dead. I tend it daily, for my lady.”  
  
 _My lady squirrel_ , Jaime thought, and not for the first time pondered the state of his sanity. He sighed.  
  
In the end, whether his brain was fevered with madness or not, they rode back to the tavern together. All three. The knight, the maid, and the squirrel who was heir to the North. Stranger things had happened, surely, something odd enough to match Sansa the squirrel, Honor the horse, and a blade called Oathkeeper.  
  
 _And I, the biggest mockery of them all._ Jaime accepted his fate, and went to collect some berries and nuts for his new Lady.


End file.
